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Editors Selection IGR 11-3
Basic research: Investigative neuroprotection
Comment by Leonard A. Levin on:
11969 Adeno-associated viruses containing bFGF or BDNF are neuroprotective against excitotoxicity, Schuettauf F; Vorwerk C; Naskar R et al., Current Eye Research, 2004; 29: 379-386
Schuettauf et al. (301) used adeno-associated virus serotype 2 to transduce brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) or basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in rat retinas, and then studied their ability to protect against NMDA-mediated excitotoxicity and optic nerve crush. They found good transduction in the inner layers of the retina with both BDNF and bFGF. They saw increased survival against excitotoxicity with bFGF and BDNF transduction, although one of the control vectors (green fluorescent protein driven by the cytomegalovirus/chicken beta-actin promoter) also led to greater survival than both another GFP vector and the bFGF vector. With crush, there was increased survival with bFGF (it appears that they did not study BDNF). Apparently "higher and lower concentrations led to diminished ganglion cell survival (data not shown)" and therefore, it is difficult to completely interpret the results. Nonetheless, this is an valuable demonstration that transduction with a long-lasting viral vector neurotrophic factors can maintain retinal ganglion cell survival, and corroborates work by others in the field.
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